Moving On
by Karama9
Summary: Sequel to Hero. Three years ago, Ganon was defeated; it's a well known fact, however, that the Demon will always come back. On hiatus.
1. Chapter 1: A Link to the Past

Disclaimer: most of the characters and setting in this story are not my own – I'm just borrowing them with the hope that Nintendo won't mind too much.

* * *

**Chapter 1: A Link to the Past**

Link clutched the Triforce to his chest, eyes closed tightly.

He didn't know what to wish for: Ganon had done too much harm, and Link suspected some of it couldn't be fixed, even by the Triforce: his uncle was dead, and so was the King; the maidens' souls had been freed, but their lives remained lost, even the Princess's.

What was there left to wish for? Ganon had already taken everything. Even the mystical Golden Realm was gone, the reflection of Hyrule's hopes and dreams turned into a nightmare by the demon.

There were many things Link wanted and could have wished for, but they were all so selfish he couldn't bring himself to do it. He wanted his uncle back, he wanted the maidens back. He wanted all the guards Aghanim had made him kill to be alive and themselves again, and to forgive him. Above all, he wanted the Princess back. He wanted her to look at him like that again, like she had when he had saved her, as if he was the sun itself. He wanted to be able to call her just Zelda, like his future self did with his. He'd happily settle for her just to be alive again, even if she never again so much as stood in his presence.

If he were to wish for any one of those things, however, wouldn't it mean giving up on the others and on everything else Ganon had soiled or destroyed? He couldn't pick one wrong to right, he wanted it all: he wanted ALL the harm Ganon had done to be undone; he wanted everything back just like it was before Ganon had gotten his paws on the Triforce.

As soon as the thought formed in Link's mind and before he even realized he had effectively made his wish or dared to hope such an all encompassing wish could be valid, the Triforce started shining, so brightly as to hurt Link's eyes right through his closed eyelids. It shone brighter and brighter, and Link had to fight back the urge to let go of it to cover his eyes with his hands. He turned his head sideway as far back as it could go instead, but it didn't help: the glow of the Triforce was filling the whole room.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the glow was gone. Link opened his eyes warily, afraid the Triforce may start shining again. It was still in his arms, but it was back to normal and thankfully stayed that way. Link looked around instinctively for any visible effect from his wish, and gasped: through the door to the room where they had fought, Ganon was scrambling up, whole and seemingly unhurt. Link's eyes went from the Demon to the Triforce and widened.

The Triforce had granted his wish, all right: everything was back, just like before Ganon had claimed the Goddesses' artefact… including Ganon.

Link's eyes went back to the pig and met the beast's own. He stuffed the Triforce into his tunic and took out his bow and arrow, expecting Ganon to charge at him. The Demon did no such thing, however; he hissed, and before Link had even had a chance to shoot a single arrow at him, he vanished with a puff of smoke.

Link's breathing accelerated. Just like that, Ganon had escaped and it was anyone's guess where he'd resurface and what he'd do - and whatever it was, Link felt it would be his fault. He clenched his teeth, re-sheathed his sword and took out the mirror that had the power to bring him back to the Real World; the first thing to do was to let the King know Ganon was loose. After that, assuming he didn't get thrown in the dungeon, Link would happily do whatever was asked of him to fix things.

As Link looked into the mirror, the room around him faded and was replaced by the castle's inner court and the sound of deafening cheers.

Link had never felt LESS deserving of cheers. He ignored them and looked around frantically, looking for the Princess; he found her standing next to her father, beaming at him. Link's heart skipped and for one glorious second, he was happier than he would ever have thought possible.

Then, reality came crashing back.

"Your Majesties," he said, addressing both of them, "he…"

"Come inside," the King cut him off, setting off towards the entrance to the throne room. "Close the door behind you," he added without turning around.

Zelda and Link followed him.

"He doesn't want a panic on his hands," Zelda explained in a whisper as they walked, "and since you obviously have bad news…"

Link nodded without meeting her eyes.

Zelda closed the door behind them once they were inside, shooing the few who had followed away with an apologetic smile.

"Firstly," the King said as he sat on his throne, "Link, I must express my gratitude, and I hope to do so properly once you have told me your news and we have dealt with it. You need to know that nothing you might tell us will change the fact you have single-handedly saved not only my daughter and myself, but the whole of Hyrule."

"He's back," Link blurted out, barely hearing him. "Ganon. And he ran off… I messed up, I really messed up. I'm so sorry… I didn't realize, I was just thinking, and the Triforce did it…"

He collapsed to his knees, shaking. He could still hear the cheering outside and it was making him feel worse. Here was everyone, so happy that all was well…

"Young man, are you saying Ganon is still alive?" the King asked.

Link nodded without raising his eyes. He felt a hand on his shoulder and the next moment, Princess Zelda's face was inches away from his own, looking serious but thankfully not angry. His heart automatically started hammering in his chest.

"Is he in the Dark World?" the Princess asked.

Link nodded again.

"Light World," he corrected. "I think. I didn't look outside, but..."

"What about the Triforce?" she interrupted him.

"I got it," Link said, pulling it out of his tunic. "But Ganon ran away, he could be…"

Link didn't finish his sentence, having suddenly lost his train of thoughts: the Princess was smiling at him. He swallowed and made a valiant – if doomed - effort at reassembling his thoughts. Zelda got up from her crouch and pulled him along so that they were both standing again.

"The only place Ganon can possibly be is the Light World," Zelda said gently, still smiling. "Remember, even with his power increased by the Triforce, he could not escape from there – that is why he needed the maidens: he wanted to use them to break the seals and thus escape his prison. Now that he has lost the maidens and that the seals are back to the level they were before Aghanim captured them, Ganon will not be able to escape the Light World, at least for a while."

Link sighed in relief and nodded to signify he understood.

"I was worried he'd go on a killing rampage, just out of spite," he said. "What about Aghanim?"

"Aghanim was created by Ganon, after he had acquired the Triforce. I'm not sure he has enough power to create a puppet like that again, and if he does, he will find us a lot more difficult to fool than last…" She didn't finish her sentence, gasping instead and suddenly backing away, her eyes wide.

Link flipped around, shield at the ready and sword in hand. Both dropped noticeably when he saw what had startled the Princess and he frowned, partly in annoyance and partly in puzzlement.

Before him stood the ghostly form of his future self, palms outward in a gesture of peace and smiling meekly.

* * *

"You again?" Link's past self groaned. He turned towards his princess, and spoke to her in a completely different tone than Link had ever heard him use.

"It's all right, Princess Zelda," he said apologetically. "This is my future self. He can send his spirit into the past and Sahasrahla has been helping him out."

The Princess visibly relaxed and eyed him curiously.

"Sorry I scared you," Link said sincerely.

"Your ears…" she said, "and that accent! From how far are you?"

Link barely understood her.

"I don't really know, to be honest," he said. It was technically true: he knew he was from at least 1500 years later than this time since that's how long Ganon had held his spirit captive before he was finally reborn, but he had no idea how much time had passed between the past life he was looking at now and the one who had been defeated by their age-old enemy.

"Look, I can't believe I'm saying this to a time travelling spirit, but well… this isn't a good time," his past self said, arms crossed and looking very much annoyed. "Did you need something?"

Link looked down and rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed. He did know this was a bad time: he had aimed for the time where this past self, which Zelda's research identified as the last one before the doomed child, needed to figure out how to hide the Triforce because Ganon was on the loose.

"Zelda thinks Ganon will be looking for the Triforce if he ever returns, and…"

"That's why you needed the Master Sword, isn't it?" his past self asked, cutting him off. "You were fighting Ganon, and you didn't tell me because you didn't want me to know he was still around in the future."

"Right," Link said. "But you know he's not dead now, so it's okay, right? Zelda said it would be."

"Yeah," his past self said with a sigh. "I already know I screwed up, no spoilers."

Link's eyes widened in disbelief. "How can you say that?" he asked. "Zelda says your wish brought everyone back to life and everything!"

"And what happens when he escapes the Light World?" his past self asked, frowning.

The Princess answered before Link could, reminding his past self that Ganon was at least trapped for a good long while – at least as far as Link could understand her. Her hand on his past self's shoulder seemed to have more effects than her words, anyway.

"I suppose," his past self answered.

"So…" Link started again, taking advantage of the pause that followed to get back on subject, "we don't want him to find the Triforce before we do, so we need to know where it is. If you don't mind, can I just stick around until you decide where you're going to hide it?"

He had a feeling even as he asked that none of them would be too keen on the idea of some weird ghost listening in on the mother of all state secrets, but he was dearly hoping he could talk them into it.

Sure enough, his past self, the princess and the King all gave him astounded looks, shocked he'd even suggest it.

"I can't be tortured to talk until I go back to my own time, and that's really far away," he argued tentatively.

They still looked extremely uncomfortable.

"Do you swear not to reveal what will be decided here to our enemies?" the King asked, speaking very slowly.

Link understood the words 'swear', 'reveal' and 'enemies' and, guessing the rest, nodded eagerly. "Not a word," he promised.

The King sighed, imitated by the Princess and the Hero.

"Very well," he said, still very slowly, going on to say something about not having any option.

Link's eyes widened briefly in surprise at the idea: he wouldn't have dreamed of staying without permission. He quickly recovered, however, and smirked as though the King was right, afraid the Regent would change his mind if he found out that he could in fact make their Hero's future self leave.

Not wanting to bother the historical figures, Link stood to the side and stayed quiet, listening all the more attentively that he had so much trouble understanding the Princess and the King.

He was still nowhere near used to the accent by the time the trio broke for the night, still having reached no conclusion. They had tossed around a lot of ideas, many of which involved magic such as Link had never even imagined, but they were finding disadvantages to all of them.

Much to Link's amazement, one of the options they had discussed with perfect seriousness was to hide the pieces of the Triforce inside the very souls of the Hero and the Princess – that possibility had eventually been discarded because it would mean giving Ganon the Triforce of Power and the Princess feared the demon would be able to gain the other two as well. Apparently, Ganon had appropriated the mystical powers of seven maidens to break the seals between Hyrule and the Sacred Realm, and the Princess felt this was a sign Ganon could tap into the power of other people's souls. Therefore, she felt the souls of his two nemeses were not safe hiding places for the pieces of the Triforce.

The other options had included several variations on breaking the Triforce into pieces and scattering it. Apparently, this strategy had had some success in the past, but they weren't confident Ganon would not find the pieces. The conversation had slowly veered to how best to hide several pieces of the Triforce, with no decision being reached before the Hero fell asleep and the Princess and King agreed to break until morning.

Link went back to his own time for a fraction of a second before sending his spirit to the following morning, catching up to his past self just as the meeting was starting up again. It took most of the day again, but it was eventually agreed that the Triforce would be separated into its three components and that as much as possible, they would be hidden outside of Hyrule, in places Ganon could hopefully never access.

The Princess started talking about where the Triforce could go, and although Link could not understand most of what she was saying, the gist of it seemed to be that they could send each piece to a location where part of the souls of the holders lingered. The King then started, and as near as Link could tell, he was instructing that since they could send the Triforce pieces magically without travelling to their destination, they should choose places nobody could get to anymore.

Link was liking the conversation less and less: it involved far too much magic for his liking, not to mention it seemed to imply his past lives had bits of their souls floating around everywhere like Poes. He wasn't as terrified of magic as he had once been – having to use it himself to survive against Ganon had taught him it had its uses – but it still made him deeply uneasy. As useful as it could be, magic had a way to backfire that he didn't like – even the blue potion, which should have been a great blessing, had turned out to be a double-edged blade at best.

The King then turned to him and asked him something. Link blinked at him: he was pretty sure the King had said something about why he was here, the Hero and the Triforce not being found, but he had no idea how he had connected the three parts.

His past self noticed his confusion and rolled his eyes at him.

"Your majesty, if I may repeat your question? Your accent is as pronounced to him as his is to you, but we can understand each other perfectly."

"Of course. Yes, do translate."

"The King wishes for you to confirm whether the Triforce was ever found after we hid it."

"No," Link answered easily. "That's why I'm here; you guys are the last time the Triforce was seen. According to history books, anyway."

His past self translated and the trio went back to ignoring him, first agreeing that it was better for the Triforce never to be whole again than to be whole in Ganon's hands and then discussing various places Ganon, the past Princesses and the past Heroes had visited outside of Hyrule. As the conversation veered into more detailed arguments on old legendary places and events, Link's past self became more of a spectator than a participant, which meant Link himself could barely follow what was going on. His past self turned straight towards him in the middle of a discussion that Link thought might be about Termina, although he could not for the life of him figure out why the King, Princess and Hero may be talking about a fictional place.

"Can you go back as far as the Hero of Time?" his past self asked him.

Link blinked at him, at a loss as to why his past self would want to know that.

"Yes," he said. "I've been there a few times. Why?"

The Princess had been listening very attentively and obviously understood his answer, because she positively beamed at him. Despite having neither blood nor cheeks at the moment, Link still felt himself blush. She answered for his past self, speaking very slowly so he'd understand.

"Please, future Hero, go back to that past life now and find out for us whether he really did travel to Termina."

Link's eyes widened. She couldn't be serious; he had always felt his Zelda had some pretty wild ideas sometimes, but this... this was plain crazy.

"Termina? You mean, with the masks that turn you into monsters and the falling moon? You think it's real?"

The Hero glared at him for the rudeness, and the King looked shocked, but the Princess didn't lose her smile and nodded.

"Yes, we think it may be, although we of course cannot be certain," she said slowly, painfully articulating each syllable. "Please, go visit the Hero of Time and find out for us. He is said to have donned the Fierce Deity Mask and stopped the moon… please, Hero… if it is real, Termina will be a safe haven for the Triforce of Courage."

She had her hands joined together by the time she finished, and her eyes were fixed on his. He swallowed and took a step back.

"O… okay. Sure, no problem. I can do that. But… what if he's never been there?"

His past self glared at him again, but the Princess prettily shrugged.

"Then it is best for us to find out sooner than later," she said, smiling softly. "Thank you, Future Hero."

She kept her eyes on him, obviously expecting him to get going right away. There was just no saying no to that face, and his past self's glare was becoming a bit more annoyed with every second that passed, so Link willed himself back to his time, intent on going straight to see the Hero of Time in Termina.

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Author's Notes:

I'm very sorry this was so long in coming. I had a feeling it might, in fact I didn't know for sure until recently whether I'd even ever write this story, and that's why I never actually promised there would be a sequel to Hero. Just the same, I know it still looked like I would write one, so I apologize for the delay. Thank you for your patience.

I have decided to upload this story as I go, which means two things: the chapters will be shorter than they were for Hero and a few weeks apart of each other. I actually have several projects on the go at the moment (most of them for a different fandom) and because I'm a bit odd, I've scheduled half an hour of writing time a week for each of them – additional writing time is spent on whatever I feel like.

I don't want to beg for reviews, but I won't insult your intelligence – I love feedback. What story I feel like spending more time on (beyond my schedule, that is) is very likely to be affected by the reviews and feedback I get. That being said, so long as I believe I still have even just one interested reader, I will keep working on this as per my established schedule. Chapters will be slow to come (one a month is my goal but I'm not sure I'll reach it), but they'll come.

Thank you in advance for your patience. I hope you'll enjoy. :D


	2. Chapter 2: Fierce Deity

**Chapter 2: Fierce Deity**

"WAIT!"

The urgent command made Link pop his eyes open to look at Zelda, who was sitting across the library table, looking very intently at him. The large history book they had been looking at sat open on the table between them, showing an artistic rendition of the Triforce in the Sacred Realm.

"What's going on?" she asked. "It's the second time you come back, and you looked like you were leaving right away again. Are you having trouble finding it? There's no need to jump around madly, we'll search the books a bit more to try and figure out where you need to go."

Link held back a chuckle. Considering they were partly the same person, Zelda was a surprising contrast to the Princess he had just met; that particular past life had been nothing but patience and sweetness, coupled with a regal look that somehow managed to combine beauty with strength of character. The present Zelda, on the other hand, was on the edge of her seat, bossing him around the second she had the chance – admittedly for his own good - and wasn't wearing her nicer clothes today, having opted for a more comfortable outfit since they had no scheduled public appearances; her garb, combined with her usual slightly harried look, made her look more battle-worn than regal.

"No, no, they have it," Link said in answer to her question. "I came back earlier to skip to the next day; it's taking them a while to decide where to hide it. They finally decided they're going to split it and hide it in three spots."

She scribbled down the information. "Where?" she asked without lifting her eyes.

"You promise you're not going to get mad?"

She looked up then, looking worried. "Mad?" she asked suspiciously. "Why would I get mad?"

"Well, I don't know about the other two yet, but right now, they want to send the Triforce of Courage to…err…" he trailed off, looking embarrassed.

"Where? Just spill, already. The way you're going on, you'd think they told you they were going to hide in Termina or something."

Link swallowed. "Heh. Good guess," he said, smiling nervously.

Zelda's eyes widened before narrowing in anger.

"Of all the waste of time…" she groaned. "Termina isn't REAL! It's a legend! Can you go back to the Hero of Time and get a written statement or something? Who knows where it will actually end up if they try sending it to Termina!"

"That's where I was going, but then you screamed at me to wait like there was some kind of emergency. And you know something? The Princess asked WAY nicer."

Zelda's eyes narrowed.

"I'm sure she did. Did she bat her beautiful royal eyelashes at you, too? And for your information, I only called out to you like that because I thought you were trying past lives at random and I wanted to save you the trouble! And I did NOT scream!"

Link quickly cast his spirit back in time again before Zelda could see him grinning at her jealousy.

* * *

During their first trip to the ruins of the Eastern Palace, Zelda and Link had been surprised by a vicious thunderstorm while they were in a section of Hyrule Plains best described as the middle of nowhere. The closest thing to shelter had been the occasional tree, and even Link knew better than to seek cover under an isolated tree in the middle of a thunderstorm. They had spent most of one day and one night being battered by pelting rain and wind strong enough to make them lose their balance.

What Link felt from the moment he arrived at his destination was hundreds of times worse. The library had been replaced by a Universe that was shaking and swirling madly around him, tossing him about like a rag doll. He had no anchor, not even the pull downward of the ground he'd had in Hyrule Field or the feel of his body, and panic gripped him in an instant. He felt utterly helpless, a mere toy about to be ripped apart, destroyed by something he could not even begin to understand.

He screamed, or thought he did: he couldn't be sure, he couldn't hear himself over the chaos surrounding him. He tried to backtrack, to go back to his own time, but his mind refused to cooperate and to concentrate on leaving, fixated instead on the fact that he was doomed: this was it, the time travel magic had finally done its thing and backfired. Despair washed over Link: he was never going to get out of whatever this was, he was never going to see Zelda again. He idly wondered how long she would wait for him to wake up, reflecting it never took him long and that therefore, she'd know something was wrong pretty quickly. He didn't know how she would react, he had no idea how she felt about him... maybe she'd be relieved to be rid of him. His heart broke at the thought as sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings rushed around him in an indescribable cacophony, tearing away mercilessly at his mind, jumbling his thoughts as though the chaos around him was a disease infecting his very soul.

Guilt overwhelmed him next, the all too familiar feeling tearing him apart as he realized that not only would Zelda now have to do everything by herself, he wouldn't be there for his long-time friends Kariko or Dekussay, either. He wouldn't even be able to keep his promise to Zelda's past self and confirm whether or not Termina was real, whether the Hero of Time had really stopped the moon from falling by going back in time over and over again to set everything right.

Something in Link's brains clicked into place at that last thought: he remembered the famed three days of Termina, the one part of the story that didn't change regardless of who was telling it. In the legends, the Hero didn't have enough time to stop the Moon from destroying the World, so he relived the same three days over and over again until he had done everything he needed to do. Link suddenly understood that his past life, to save the World, had made one big mess of the time around the events and that this mess was what he now found himself caught in. This impossible storm was due to his trying to go to a time within those three days, a time that had been forced to replay itself over and over again. Chances were he just had to aim for a point in time that was outside of those repeated days.

Link crossed his fingers and concentrated on finding his past self _after_ he'd stopped the moon from falling. Almost instantly, the storm settled and the images, sounds and sensations that had been madly trashing around converged into a very big plain, upon which stood what Link could only assume was his past self – he looked like the adult Hero of Time, anyway… or at least like the Hero of Time with white hair, strange clothes, a deadly looking sword and a lot of freaky makeup.

The figure turned fully towards him and its pupil-less, glowing eyes widened.

"You're the future one," it said. Its voice was deeper than the Hero of Time's had been, and Link couldn't help but imagine the girls back home very literally swooning at the deep sounding, mystical looking, glowing Hero.

Link nodded, at a loss for words. The Hero looked him up and down.

"I think he would want me to help you," the Hero said. "The child that is me."

Link gulped, suddenly understanding why the Hero of Time was acting so strange: the mask had taken over, changing his mind as much as his body.

"Aren't you… going to give him back his body?" he asked with a shaky voice.

"Yes."

"When?"

"I feel it is better for me to meet you now than for him. Once you have gone, I expect I will have no more reason to be."

Link gulped again. All traces of jealousy towards his past self for the reaction girls might have to his current state were gone, replaced by a mix of fear and pity.

"I… I just wanted to check that Termina was real."

"He would ask why. Perhaps that is the reason it is better for me to talk to you: so he does not ask questions to which he should not know the answers. I will not ask; I care not what your motivations are. Termina, as you can plainly see, is real. Thanks to the child, it is now also safe."

"O… okay," Link said, his voice still trembling: the Mask was the embodiment of everything that was wrong with magic, and was well past creepy – it was downright terrifying. How the Hero of Time had ever recovered from being taken over by that thing, he'd never understand.

The Mask that was inhabiting the Hero of Time said nothing, merely looking at him, waiting.

"I'll… I'll go now," Link stuttered. "Thanks."

He gladly focused on his own time and opened his physical eyes to the reassuringly familiar sight of the library and of Zelda looking at him, waiting for him to come back.

"So?" she asked.

"It's real," Link said. He shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. "The Hero had a mask on that turned him into this… thing. He glowed, and it wasn't him… but it was? I could still understand what he was saying, and he knew who I was."

"The Hero of Time was glowing?"

Much to Link's annoyance, Zelda automatically coloured a bit. The original Hero of Time had survived through the generations as what could best be described as a historical sex symbol. Link could attest first hand as to the reason for this: the guy had been, in all fairness, ridiculously good looking. Combining that with the mysteries that surrounded him, you had yourself a very enduring girl magnet.

"He looked scary," he specified. "White hair, weird makeup… and his voice was all freaky, too."

Zelda's cheek went back to their natural colour, but she rubbed her chin pensively.

"I think you saw the fierce deity mask," she mused. "It shows up in some versions of the story…" she trailed off for a moment. "I can't believe it's real!" she started again, her voice filled with awe. "Termina…! Did you ask him about the three days?"

"I didn't have to," Link replied, shuddering again at the memory. "It was like a really bad storm when I got there, but not like a rain storm... it was like _everything_ was a storm. I figured out it was because of the three days, so I aimed for after them. It stopped right away and I was with that mask thing."

"We'll need to figure out how to get there so we'll know if Ganon's going that way, but it's not much good finding out how the Hero of Time did, the geography's changed way too much…" Zelda mused out loud, entirely missing out on the chance to show a bit of sympathy for what Link had been through.

"I should go report to the Princess," Link said drily.

Zelda nodded absently, already trying to decide which books might have information on how to find an entrance into Termina, and Link once again left his body to send his spirit into the distant past.

He came back to Zelda still thinking hard, and cleared his throat to attract her attention. She looked up at him or rather, she tilted her head so that her eyes were pointed in his direction and slowly brought them to focus in on him.

"I know where the other two are," he said. "I checked and everything. Don't freak out, okay?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"It can hardly be worse than Termina," she said with a snort.

Link squirmed in his chair a bit.

"Well, the Triforce of Wisdom is in Hyrule," he started. "They turned it into a decorative tile in the courtyard of Hyrule Castle."

Zelda noted down the information.

"I'm pretty sure the Castle was destroyed and rebuilt a few times since. There's no telling where that particular tile is… it may have been thrown out, yet…" she muttered. "Okay," she added as she looked at him again. "What about the Triforce of Power?"

"You remember I said I checked it out, right?"

Zelda frowned slightly, growing worried. "Please don't tell me it's in a Minish Village."

"Ah! You don't guess right ALL the time!" Link said, smiling nervously before becoming serious again. "They sent it in the Twilight Realm," he finished in one breath.

Zelda's eyes went wide. "You said you checked. Were you there?"

"N… no," Link answered. He had consciously avoided actually going into the Twilight, for reasons he felt should be obvious: namely, it was the TWILIGHT, also known as the realm of permanent night with a weird glow and strange creatures everywhere. "I talked to the Hero chosen by the Gods right after HE was there," he finished.

"Chosen by the Gods?" Zelda asked. "Not by the Goddesses? Wait, did he actually introduce himself like that?"

Link chuckled at the thought of his past self extending his arm to shake hands and saying "Hello, I'm Link, the Hero Chosen by the Gods."

"No," he said with a smirk, "that's just what the Princess called him when she was talking about the Twilight. I did ask him about the Goddesses, though; He knew them, but he said it was the Gods that helped him."

"Oooo-kay," Zelda said. "It doesn't matter anyway. So, had he been to the Twilight?"

Link nodded and became sombre again.

"Yeah, but he couldn't go there anymore. He said the portal was broken by the Twilight Princess… he looked pretty upset. I think they were friends."

Zelda's eyes widened again. "They're lovers in many versions of the legend," she pointed out.

"Do… do you think that's possible?" Link asked. "I kind of thought…" he trailed off without elaborating, his eyes lowering to the table.

Zelda felt her cheeks flush. She knew what Link had been about to say: many people honestly believed that the Hero and the Princess had been a couple in every last one of their incarnations. It was admittedly a charming notion: a love spanning the centuries and uniting to defeat evil… the only problem, and the reason Link had chosen not to elaborate, was that thanks to that belief, many people had been pushing the two of them together ever since Ganon had been defeated. At the same time, Zelda was constantly given completely unneeded sympathy from former higher class citizens, who felt sorry that she had to put up with the former lower class Link and felt the need to ask whether he could even read yet. Link had confided that he was getting similar comments, adapted of course to his having to put up with a supervisor, from fellow former lower class citizens.

All in all, they were both under a lot of pressure to get together and a good bit of counter pressure not to, and they hadn't been given any chance to make up their own mind, leading to a three year long standstill. Link had recently been giving subtle hints that he had feelings for her – this expression of incredulity at any of his past life having feelings for anyone who wasn't one of hers being just one more example – but Zelda couldn't bring herself to respond one way or another and Link seemed afraid to go any further than those barely-there indications, which made her think he was more trying to assess her own feelings than anything else.

She cleared her throat.

"Well, if there's no way in at all, that's actually excellent news," she said. "Ganon will not be able to get the Triforce back together again if he's missing a third of it."

"Right!" Link said, sounding hopeful.

"We can't really assume a new portal hasn't been created since or that Ganon can't create one himself, though," she added.

"Right," Link sighed. "How come nothing's ever easy?"

"Do you know where the pieces are in Termina and the Twilight Realm?" she asked, ignoring the rhetorical question as the aimless venting that it was.

He shook his head.

"They were going to send them there with magic, by using leftover energy from the Hero and Ganon… echoes of their souls or something like that." He let out an embarrassed chuckle. "I think. I didn't really understand that part. Anyway, the point is, they won't know where the pieces went. They disguised them, too, just like the one they're leaving in Hyrule. The Triforce of Courage has a spell on it that makes everyone believe it's a copy, and the Triforce of Power looks like a jewel."

"Okay, I think that's good for today," Zelda said after writing down what he had told her. She got up to stretch and smiled at him. "Thank you, Link. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Link's response was interrupted by the President erupting from behind a bookshelf, looking besides himself.

"There you two are! Oh Goddesses, what are you WEARING? Link! Brown? Really? Zelda, you look like a pauper! Go, go! Go get change! Luckily, I know you well enough, I brought you some proper clothes!"

At that, he produced two bags and, walking to the table, put them on it.

"Sir? We don't have any scheduled appearances today," Zelda remarked.

"I know, I know!" the President said. "He just came out of nowhere. His name's Lakei, he's from out East, he wants to set up some tours around the harder to reach areas. He mentioned diving in Lake Hylia, and spelunking in Death Mountain… that kind of stuff. Come on, he's waiting!"

Zelda and Link sighed. Playing nice to tourists and investors was basically their day job, and although it could hardly be called hard work, getting gawked at and asked all kinds of questions - the answers to which they usually had no way to know - all the while acting heroic and princess-like, respectively, had long since gotten old.

"Sir, we were going to go supervise the Eastern Temple site this afternoon," Zelda said, frowning.

"That can wait a day," the President said dismissively.

"We're booked solid tomorrow," Link reminded him. "Those schools in the morning, and we're doing tours of the castle in the afternoon."

"You are absolutely right," the President said. "Day after that, then."

Zelda opened her mouth to protest, but the President cut her off.

"Zelda, I'm sorry. I know you honestly think building the Wonders back is important…"

"It IS," Zelda snapped. "They are tests for the Hero as well as training grounds. We do NOT want another 5-year-old trapped in a bottle for centuries, now do we?"

Link coughed and shifted, obviously uncomfortable.

"Yes, alright," the President said. "But we NEED all the tourism money we can get, you know that: we can't continue to improve things around here without some funds. Nobody wants to buy our stockpiles of cheap swords and shields and we can barely grow enough food to feed ourselves; our only marketable resource is our history!"

Zelda rolled her eyes and Link snickered: the President made the very same mini-speech regularly, at the slightest prompting. The elected ruler of Hyrule gave them a weak glare and cleared his throat.

"The point is, I can appreciate that you're trying to look after the future, but we first need to look after the present. We need all the money people are willing to give us for the privilege of looking at us and at our various historical sites. You're a BIG part of the attraction, therefore you're needed."

Link and Zelda nodded, resigned, and got up, grabbing their respective bags to go change in the bathrooms. They came out a few minutes later, Link decked out in his green Hero outfit and Zelda in a princess-like gown, complete with ornamental tiara.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

I assure you, things are actually in motion for events that are even MORE thrilling than Link and Zelda doing research in a library. No, really!

Thank you for reading, and thank you for reviewing!


	3. Chapter 3: Hyrule Post Ganon

**Chapter 3: Hyrule Post Ganon**

The President, Link and Zelda met up with the visitor just outside the library.

"Mister Lakey," the President greeted with a wide smile, "allow me to introduce our brave hero Link and the wise Zelda."

Link and Zelda smiled and nodded, playing the parts they knew by heart by now and hiding any reaction to the man before them. This was much easier than it had once been.

Now that the borders were no longer guarded by a variety of monsters, visitors from outside coming to see the mystic land of Hyrule with their own eyes had become commonplace. Link and Zelda had been just as shocked as the rest of the population when the tourists had first started showing up: they looked like the people of Hyrule, but their garbs, vehicles and whatever possessions they carried with them were beyond what anyone had ever imagined could exist.

The clothes worn by the visitors were brightly coloured, stretched to fit the body perfectly, sometimes had intricate patterns and, all in all, looked like they cost a fortune right until you realized everyone from outside was wearing similar quality fabrics.

Yet, the clothing was the least of the wonders people brought with them to Hyrule. Some of the tourists travelled in what Link though of as mechanical chariots that moved without horses and reminded him of the trains of legends without the inconvenience of the need for rails. Others arrived by boats that used neither sails nor oars and sped along the water faster than anything he had ever seen. As another sign of how wonders could be mass produced, children routinely used wheeled shoes or devices they could sit on and guide with their hands while their feet effortlessly caused the wheels to turn and to propel them forward much faster than anyone could walk.

Those same children had toys their parents allowed them to toss around like they were worth nothing and that looked like finely crafted treasures to Link. Many of the tourists, of all ages, wore jewels that seemed fit for royalty, and many wore a special kind of jewel that was actually a decorative mechanical device and that could tell the time of day without using the sun's shadow or any other of the usual clues. As if that weren't enough, they had objects that acted like flat, very clear crystal balls, playing miniature stories and concerts just as if you were watching them in person, or displaying pages from books or pictographs. The tourists were even able to store whatever they wanted in the little devices, from text and pictographs to moving pictures with sounds.

It was all shocking and wondrous at first, but in three years, the Hyrulians had become accustomed to the fact that in 15 centuries of Ganon's reign, the World had moved on without them. On one hand, it was a wonderful opportunity: all the wonders you could dream of, available from their neighbours. On the other hand, the neighbours were not giving it away for free and Hyrule had very little they could trade for it - even the tourism money barely covered the more immediate expenses and didn't begin to allow them the kind of purchasing power they'd need to really make a difference.

"A pleasure," Lakey said in response to the introductions, looking Link and Zelda up and down. "I dare assume these ornate garments are costumes, not everyday clothes? Disguising yourself was quite unnecessary, I'm far more interested in the Hyrule of today than that of the distant past."

The President laughed the remark off and invited the three of them to take place in the cart that was to take them to the castle.

"Ah, see?" the man said. "This is more like it: an actual horse-drawn carriage!"

They started on their merry way, and the President started detailing the state Hyrule had been in three years ago as his usual prologue to the progresses that had been made since.

"I'm sorry," the tourist interrupted at one point. "Did you say the life expectancy was of twenty-five years?"

The President nodded, affecting the usual horrified air that tourists seemed unable to handle not seeing when told this particular fact. Generations of Hyrulians had always considered thirty years old to be extreme old age, but it had turned out that in the rest of the World, people lived three times as long.

"Ganon really maintained absolute power, didn't he?" Lakey asked, his eyes wide. "Such living conditions, and not a single uprising in centuries!"

"We thought he had already been defeated, and new leaders were elected every five years," the President explained. "I'm happy to say that we've made amazing leaps in health and longevity, even in just three years."

Zelda bit the inside of her lip, abstaining from comments. They had indeed, thanks to the blue potion, but better health had come with a price higher for some than for others.

"So I've heard," Lakey said. "Although I have also heard that the main reason for this is at the heart of a crime wave. Link, you must be aware of it, since you are the one who blessed Hyrule with this panacea?"

Link paled. He had no clue what the last word the tourist had said was, but the man's meaning was still clear.

"Some people have indeed become addicted to the blue potion," Zelda admitted, "and we are working towards preventing profit-seekers from selling facsimiles for exorbitant prices. It would be terribly unfair of anyone to blame Link for these activities: all he did was unearth the recipe to help anyone with severe injuries or debilitating illnesses."

"And as a matter of fact, we don't blame him at all," the President said, his tone somewhere between light and strict as he tried to make their guest understand his comment had been in poor taste without offending the man with the wallet-full of money.

"Of course," Lakey said. "Oh, is that the palace?" he asked, pointing out the window of the carriage. Despite the blatant change of subject, there was not a hint of embarrassment in his voice.

"Yes, it is!" the President exclaimed, happy to go along with the change of subject. "We have a nice model of Hyrule I'd like to show you, and several paintings of each region. Travelling to Lake Hylia would take far too long, but I think you will get an idea of the vista from the exhibit."

"Ah, so you employ artists?" the tourist asked. "I thought everyone worked on the farms. Link?"

Link blinked helplessly for a second, taken aback by both the question and the fact it had been directed at him. "Err… the paintings are really old, aren't they, Sir?"

"Most are," the President answered. "Any new art is done by people on their free time… labour is too precious at the moment to lose any of it to frivolities."

"We don't want to rely on magic alone to keep people healthy, and a big part of accomplishing that is a reasonable work schedule and plenty of healthy food," Zelda elaborated. "To achieve this, most people do indeed need to work on the farms. It's not everyone, however: we have teachers educating the children, guards to keep us safe…"

"And of course, Link and yourself are doing mostly PR," the visitor said as they got out of the carriage and started walking from the courtyard to the exhibit.

"Pea what?" Link asked.

"Public Relations," Lakey translated. "Just like you're doing now."

Link felt himself turn a bit red in embarrassment: Lakey's tone mirrored his own feeling that chatting up the tourists was a rather easy job.

"You already know a lot about Hyrule, don't you, Mr. Lakey?" Zelda asked.

"I did my research," the man answered lightly, "just like you'd expect from an investor. I do like to hear things from the point of view of the land's two saviours, however."

The conversation veered to more geographical concerns once they arrived at the exhibit, but in a short hour, Lakey still managed to make Link and Zelda extremely uncomfortable by bringing up such issues as inadequate housing and clothing, personal freedom and even child rearing and the increasingly popular argument for strict birth control as a mean to economize sparse resources.

"Well," he said after hearing the latest details on law enforcement and criminal activities, "at least you're TRYING to prevent murders now. That's a huge progress, isn't it? I understand Ganon encouraged monsters to kill regularly, not to mention the lives he took himself. Wasn't he particularly active shortly before your battle with him, Link?"

Link's eyes lowered and he bit his lips. Ganon had indeed killed a lot of people during that period, and for the most part, had done so because of him: first out of frustration when the Demon had been fooled into thinking the pointy eared worker Link was not his quarry, and afterwards while trying to draw him out. Meanwhile, Link had been hiding, safe and sound in the Lost Woods even as dozens of innocents were being slaughtered. All these people had died at the monster's hand because the person who was supposed to be courage made flesh was hiding like a rat in his hole, because Hyrule's legendary Hero was too scared of the Big Bad Pig to face him like a man.

He heard Zelda answer, but his brains did not quite register exactly what she was saying. She looked angry at Lakey, so chances were she was defending him again. Link would have been hard pressed to explain why, but she was constantly telling everyone who seemed to think differently, including himself, that he'd had no choice and that Ganon would have killed him and won again if he'd acted any differently.

"I'm sorry, I see this is a touchy subject," Lakey said. "Let's get back to the subject of my visit. I'd like to organize visits inside the Tower of Hera."

The suggestion brought Link right back to reality. His eyes widened and he gaped at the man.

"I'm sorry, but the inside of the Tower is off-limit to everyone," the President answered. "We can arrange for tours of Death Mountain that include seeing the outside of the structure," he offered.

"But Mr. President," their guest insisted, "people would absolutely love to be able to see the site of Ganon's final defeat."

"There's still stuff in it," Link said, not correcting the man's impression that Ganon had been defeated for good simply to avoid getting into a lengthy debate and history lesson.

Zelda nodded. "We've been working on restoring the Three Wonders, but when we visited what we thought would be an empty Tower of Hera… it wasn't."

Link shuddered at the memory.

* * *

_Link sighed in relief upon stepping out of the Cavern-City that had once been the home of the Gorons. Even with all the torches in the place lit using Din's Fire, and even knowing precisely where the exit was, walking through the place was never fun: the light was nice in the sense it allowed Zelda and him to see where they were stepping, but it also served to confirm that they were walled in an age-old structure that was already in the process of collapsing._

"_Tell you what," Zelda said with a shaky voice, "we'll take the long way down."_

"_Works for me," Link answered. His voice did not sound any steadier than hers. "It's too bad we can't just make new Lost Doors."_

"_I told you I was looking into that, right?" she asked. She sounded much better already, now that they were walking away from the cave. "I can't find a thing, though."_

"_I don't think you're going to. My guess is that the Great Deku Tree's ancestors made them a really, really long time ago."_

_They were walking as they talked, kicking tektites out of the way as necessary._

"_I don't know, it seems odd that the Great Deku Tree has no recollection of it at all," Zelda said. _

_Link shrugged without answering, his attention mostly diverted to the building that now loomed before them._

"_I know it's stupid, but I wish we didn't have to go back in there," he said._

"_You're still worried that the monsters are back?"_

"_I… I don't know. Maybe." He glanced at the sword attached to his belt and at the old Moblin wallet next to it, which currently held several bottles of blue potion - the moblin money he had found in this very tower was long gone, but the leather pouch had not lost its capacity to hold more than its size should allow. "I don't know why. We can just run if we see one, right? And that sword is pretty good, and you got a bow, and we got lots of potions..." he trailed off, unable to explain how he felt._

_Zelda bit her lips. She shared her companion's misgivings about going back into the Tower and, like him, she could not quite explain why. She certainly hoped the monsters weren't back, but the idea that they might be did not frighten her all that much. Their plan was for Link to cast Din's Fire as soon as they were inside, quickly followed by Nayru's Love, so if there was anything on the first floor of the Tower, it would be either incinerated or visible and unable to reach them._

"_Ganon killed us both in there," she said. "Maybe we just fear the memory."_

_Link turned to her, his eyes wide. "You too?" _

_She nodded._

"_Well, there's nothing for it," he sighed. "We're never going to be able to get it ready for the next Hero without going in. If the monsters are back, I say it's ready enough. What do you think?"_

_She nodded again, the knot in her throat making it difficult to talk. The two took the last few steps to the door of the Tower and stood in the doorway for a fraction of a second, bracing themselves, before stepping inside._

_Link immediately followed the plan, drawing Zelda next to him and casting Din's Fire and Nayru's Love in rapid succession. All the torches on the floor lit, revealing a few keeses and a few piles of bones, some of which could be safely assumed to be Stalfos._

"_Well, we knew this room wasn't empty," Zelda said. "It would have been nice if they had all died off or left, but their presence doesn't mean anything, we need to go in dee…"_

"_Come to gloat, have we?"_

_The voice interrupted Zelda mid-word and its owner appeared right in front of them at the moment he spoke. Link's brain froze: before them stood Ganon, or more precisely, his ghost. He would have been frightened of any ghost, and of course Ganon in any shape or form petrified him, so Ganon as a ghost was simply more than the coherent part of him could handle. _

_His instincts took over, and his instincts told him to flee. He grabbed Zelda's arm and ran back to the door, dragging her along. They were outside after a mere few steps, but he kept running, Zelda eventually managing to sort of run along rather than being dragged outright._

"_You can stop, he's not following!" she panted after a while. "Wait… he can't! Link, you can stop!"_

_He slowed down enough to look back: she was right, there was nothing behind them. He slowed down to a fast walk._

"_Are you sure? Why not? Why can't he?" he asked, ready to take off again should her answers prove unsatisfactory._

"_I should have expected it," Zelda said, still panting and bent in two as she tried to catch her breath back. "He wanted to trap your soul again." She stopped, out of breath and saliva, and inhaled deeply a few times before continuing. "He was going to use a bottle, but he forgot to bring one so he put a spell on the building, to make it trap spirits." She stopped to catch her breath again. "I can't believe I didn't clue in earlier, he TOLD me!" she finished, scowling at herself._

"_You mean while he was torturing you?"Link asked, his tone incredulous. "Zelda…" he groaned, palming his forehead, "you can't expect to remember everything he was ranting about back then!"_

_Zelda sighed and shook her head: she DID remember, she was just set on not thinking about it, and her childish evasion had almost given Ganon a chance to attack them again._

"_Let's head back," she sighed. "We have our answer on the Tower: it's too dangerous for future heroes to face before they acquire the Master Sword. We'll have to figure out something."_

* * *

They had realized on the way down the mountain, once their nerves had settled a little, that they had no idea just how much harm the spirit could do. They had further realized that their first step in getting the Tower of Hera to be a test and training ground again would be to find out whether Ganon's Ghost was dangerous by confronting him. It was now almost three years later and that confrontation had still not taken place, Link and Zelda busying themselves with the other two Wonders first, reasoning things wouldn't go any faster if they spread their energy between all three. In the meantime, they were not taking any chances and consistently represented the Tower as full of monsters rather than risk some people deciding that taking a look at Ganon's ghost was worth the risk. Only the President had been told about the haunting, and he had forbidden anyone go anywhere near the cursed building.

"What's in there?" the tourist asked.

"The point is, it's dangerous," the President cut in. "I can't allow any visitors there, not for all the money in the World."

The tourist seemed to ponder a moment, and finally shrugged. "A shame it's not safe," he said. "It would have been a very popular attraction."

* * *

Several hours later, in the deep of night, Lakey whistled tunelessly as he peered out the windows of his personal helicopter with his night vision glasses. He would have preferred to be guided to the Tower and thus save himself this search, but it was somewhat amusing that the President and his tourist attractions hero and princess honestly thought they could keep him away from where he wanted to go by simply refusing to take him there. He chuckled as he pictured the faces they'd make if they knew he had the means to fly right to the Tower and the ability to see in the dark.

He spotted the Tower near the summit of the mountain and guided his helicopter down towards it. The narrowness of the plateau on which the tower sat forced him to land a few minutes walk away from it, just west of a rock formation that he recognized from the exhibit the President had shown him as Spectacle Rock.

He shut the engine and jumped out of the cockpit, heart pounding and grinning like a maniac: he had been looking forward to this night for a very long time.

He snickered at the memory. He had been headed for a life of mediocrity, the same kind of life as everyone else, but it had all changed when he'd wandered into that haunted house on a bet, as a teenager. Although the place was decidedly scary, and part of him had indeed believed it to be inhabited by spirits, he had gone in because reason dictated that if ghosts existed at all, they were immaterial and could not harm you.

The assumption had nearly cost him his life: the house was the haunting ground of three Poes. The malevolent ghostly monsters had tortured his mind as well as his body for most of the night before he'd finally managed to escape while they argued over who would get to kill him.

He had learned two important lessons that night: one, old legends were in fact sometimes based on truth; two, he needed to be more powerful than anything that might want to hurt him. Tonight was the culmination of the journey started all those years ago. Tonight, he would finally have the power of a God.

He turned on his flashlight and walked to the Tower of Hera, not even pausing when he reached the doorway.

* * *

The inside of the Tower looked pretty much like the outside: threatening in a way that had nothing to do with the possibility of structural collapse. Lakey had studied magic for most of his life, and could feel its presence permeating the place: it was in the walls, in the floors, in the piles of bones that he intended to avoid just in case they were really Stallfos, and in the very air he was breathing.

He walked to the closest staircase and climbed down the narrow stairs, more to get away from the sleeping Stalfos than anything else. He found himself in a small basement room with another pile of bones and groaned: the Hero hadn't done a very thorough job cleaning this place up. He climbed back up the stairs to the main room and from there, found another staircase, this one going up. He took it and found himself in a small room. He wrinkled is nose in distaste at the smell that seemed to come from the many brown stains on the floor – a mix of rotten meat and mouldy dust.

As stinky as it was, however, the room was empty and therefore suited his purposes: no amount of noise he made here would wake up a sleeping Stalfos. He closed the door, walked to the center of the room – kicking an empty treasure chest out of the way – and called out.

"Ganondorf Dragmire! I have a proposal I believe you will find most interesting!"

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Sorry for the delayed update, I've been mostly concentrating on my GI Joe stories lately… I just finished one but still have three more underway, and then there are all those pesky plot bunnies… anyway, I do apologize.

Thank you for reading, and please review! I have no other way to tell how you feel about the story and besides, it's win-win if you do like it, since reviews typically motivate me and therefore make me spend more time writing.


	4. Chapter 4: The Deal

**Chapter 4: The Deal**

Link stopped in front of the cemetery's gate and swallowed as he forced himself to look at the many rows of markers. He looked to the leftmost ones and slowly moved his gaze across them all to the rightmost ones. There were far too many graves, and too many of them dated back to three years ago. Link didn't allow himself to turn his gaze away and to start walking again until he had taken in every last one of the tombs and whispered a heartfelt apology to all of them.

It had become a ritual: whenever he walked by a cemetery alone, he stopped, looked at the resting place of all those who had died, and apologized. He did so because he felt most of those people had died before their time by his fault: for ages, people had been dying young because Ganon ruled, and the reason the Monster had taken power and kept it was that Link, in his past life, had let Ganon defeat him and trap his spirit in a bottle, there to stay for centuries while Hyrule suffered. Link realized that just how much responsibility he bore for those centuries could be considered debatable, but there was no arguing that three years ago, he had been hiding from his fated nemesis while a lot of people were dying horrible deaths. He'd been tucked away in the Lost Woods, safe and sound and driving Ganon mad with frustration, and he had let the Demon take out his rage on everyone else.

He felt that acknowledging his failures and expressing his regrets over them was the very least he could do for the people he had failed to help. He knew Zelda would not approve of the ritual or the reasoning behind it; she always insisted that nothing was his fault, that he'd had no choice but to hide because he would have died at Ganon's hands had he battled him before he was ready. Link did agree that he'd had to avoid Ganon while he was securing the Master Sword but otherwise felt that Zelda's arguments missed the point entirely. He hadn't first run off so he could get the weapon he needed to face Ganon, he had done it because he was afraid of being who he was. As for his defeat fifteen centuries earlier, it had had absolutely nothing to do with taking the time to get ready, quite the opposite. All in all, Zelda's argument, far from excusing him of everything, only absolved him of a small part of his responsibility for Ganon's victims and even less than that when you considered that in the end, Link had still faced Ganon unprepared, unable to properly use one of the two weapons he needed to defeat the pig.

He'd explained all that to Zelda before, but she always refused to move an inch and simply insisted he had done his best; it was a pointless argument. Link therefore resisted following his little routine when he was with Zelda, and contented himself with looking at the graves as he passed by and sending his apologies in thoughts. When he was alone, however, like tonight, he had to make himself leave again by thinking of why he needed to get going. It felt a lot like excusing himself to leave a gathering and dreading that everyone will protest and insist that no, you're in fact not excused at all.

He focused his thoughts on Kariko and Dekussay and turned away from the cemetery. He spurred his horse into a trot again and continued on his way to the dorm where both his friends still lived.

Re-housing people who already had a place to stay warm, dry and safe was pretty low on the President's list of priorities and as a result, the only former lower class citizens who had moved into private houses were families and former higher class citizens without families had taken their places in the dorms. Link was an exception, as he slept at the Palace, but he visited his old dorm and his friends on a regular basis.

Kariko was outside waiting for him, just like every week. As usual, she grinned and waved at him as soon as he was within sight and Link grinned back. Not one to allow herself too much display of affections, Kariko had her arms crossed and was scowling by the time he reached her and dismounted. Despite the fact she had recovered her eye and that her scars were gone, her scowls were as scary as ever: Link figured it was a natural talent.

"You're late again," she said. "Did you stop by the cemetery?"

"Just for a bit."

She rolled her eyes. "You know, it's bad enough I have to deal with Dekussay: I really wish you could stop being messed up too!" she hissed. "Look: YOU. SAVED. HYRULE! Just because you couldn't save EVERYONE…"

"I didn't even try to save a lot of them," Link interrupted her. "Never mind me, okay? How's Dekussay?"

Her expression softened from anger to worry.

"He's shaking pretty bad," she said. "I… I think he's going to need potion for real soon, he's making himself sick. He's shivering, and he won't eat, and I don't think he sleeps much; he looks exhausted."

Link swallowed. Every doctor he'd asked had agreed that more potion would only make things worse for Dekussay and that he just needed to wait out the desire for the drug with the support of his friends. Link shook his head.

"I spoke to a bunch of doctors, and they all say not to."

She sighed heavily. "He's going to spend the whole night begging you for the stuff. You know that, right?"

Link nodded. "I know. I didn't bring any, just so I wouldn't give in."

Kariko nodded grimly and the two went inside to meet with Dekussay.

* * *

"…so we spent the rest of the day with this creepy tourist and we never did get to the Eastern Temple," Link concluded.

He'd just finish relating his day, talking in tongues about just what he'd been looking for in the past, referring to it as information they'd need if Ganon came back. Nobody but Zelda, the President and himself knew about the possibility that the monster may be looking for the Triforce, and letting anyone else know that they were looking for the all powerful wish granting magical artefact was out of the question – the last thing they needed was to race against a bunch of people who were also trying to find it. Link loved Kariko and Dekussay dearly, but Kariko lost control of her mouth on an hourly basis and Dekussay could become desperate enough to sell the information in exchange for blue potion. Beyond that, the risk of simply being overheard was an unnecessary one to take.

"How was he creepy?" Kariko asked. "Did he look weird? More than the rest of them, I mean? Some of them look like their clothes are painted on, I swear. And all that stuff! I wouldn't even know where to put half of it and they lug it here on vacation!"

Link made a face. "He looked normal, for a tourist. It's just that he kept asking about all the bad stuff, like the crimes and how almost everyone has to work for the farms."

"There wouldn't be so much crime if blue potion was easier to get," Dekussay grumbled.

"We haven't found a good source for the ingredients yet," Link apologized. "Those mushrooms are hard to come by."

"Can't you get some in the past?" his friend asked, glaring at him as if daring him to come up with a reason why he couldn't go get some blue potion right that moment.

Link lowered his eyes: he could, and he had. His ability to project his spirit into the past also allowed him to bring things back, so long as they did not still exist in his time. The only problem was that the last time he had tried to bring back some blue potion, he had felt a very strong urge not to. Zelda's theory was that he had moved too much magic to their own time already and that if he kept at it, he'd end up creating some kind of magic overload. Needless to say, Link had then decided that not a single drop of blue potion was going to travel in time again.

"I can't anymore," he muttered. "I'm sorry."

"Even if he could, you still shouldn't have any," Kariko said, addressing Dekussay. "You're not sick, you're not injured, you don't need it and that's that."

"I AM sick!" Dekussay protested.

"No you're not, not for real. So Link, do you have all the information you need, now?"

Link eagerly seized the change of subject.

"No, but we're probably not going to find any more in the past." He let out a sigh before he continued. "The scary part is that Ganon might decide to get the information from us, but we still have to look for it, because if he finds it somewhere else or by magic or something, and we don't have it too, we're REALLY going to be in trouble."

Kariko's eyes widened.

"What are you going to do if Ganon tries to get it out of you?" she asked.

"Zelda says she has a plan, but she won't tell me what it is. I hope she doesn't mean for us to go hide again, or…" Link trailed off, unwilling to speak the thought that Zelda may intend to kill herself to prevent Ganon from torturing the Triforce's location out of her.

The thought did not occur to Kariko, and so, she attributed his sudden gloominess to the idea of Zelda deciding to go into hiding.

"Stop that," she said in a stern tone.

Link blinked at her.

"You mentioned hiding and your face fell right to the floor," Kariko continued. "From what you just told us, you already had three guilt-trips this week, and that's your quota. You agreed."

Link snorted. She wasn't lying, she had indeed made him formally agree that he wouldn't go on a guilt-trip more than three times a week, excluding his apologizing to the graves, which he was allowed to do as many times as he walked by a cemetery. Kariko felt this exception made the agreement incredibly generous.

"Okay," he conceded with a theatrical sigh, unwilling to admit what was really upsetting him and to burden his friends when he couldn't even explain why their having this information and Ganon not getting it was so vitally important.

From there, the conversation veered to how Kariko and Dekussay's week had been, with Kariko of course providing most of the narration while Dekussay's occasional comments were centered on wanting blue potion, from claiming he was too tired to do his work properly to pointing out other people had been given some for what he felt were frivolous reasons.

As it turned out, their week had gone as fine as one could hope for. Kariko loved her job of driving a carriage filled with food from various farms to the distributions centers and she got along with her new helper wonderfully. He was apparently just as chatty as she was and they could be riding for hours without the conversation running dry at any point. Dekussay, although he still looked terrible to Link, had at least not shown any outright aggression, which was a vast improvement from the previous week, when he'd actually assaulted someone who had been falsely pretending to have blue potion precisely to rile him up. Link felt the idiot had deserved his broken nose and had been disappointed when it had been healed at the Hospital.

Link took his leave when the curfew rang and, hopping on his horse, sped back towards the Palace and his room.

* * *

Ganon let the man call out for a long while: entertainment was rare and valuable here. He used the time to examine the fool.

The first noticeable thing was that his visitor was possessed of some magic – it showed in his eyes, and the various remnants of magical energies that were in the room swirled around him, attracted to the new power. It looked a lot like a pack of Wolfos sniffing out a new member.

The man also seemed to be from away, judging from his outrageous clothing. A quick probe in his mind revealed he was from across the Sea and believed himself to have been from Termina before that. Ganon wasn't sure the place even existed, and so did not know whether that belief was delusional or not.

Examining him a bit longer, Ganon decided that the stranger's body language and the way he talked suggested a certain assurance and sense of self-worth that usually came from fortune and dominion over others. At a guess, Ganon thought he may be a prince, a politician, or possibly just a land owner with delusions of grandeur.

Above all, the man was determined: Ganon estimated he had been calling out to him for over an hour by now.

"You are nothing if not persistent," the Demon remarked as he finally made himself visible a few feet in front of his visitor.

The man's eyes widened but, to his credit, he did not so much as stagger back.

"Your appearance…" he whispered. "Should I call you Ganon?"

"You may as well," Ganon replied. "I haven't used the name I was born with in eons. Now that I have graced you with my attention, you may want to start making yourself entertaining before I find other ways to amuse myself with you."

"I wouldn't recommend you damage my body," Lakey answered with a self-assured smirk. "You and I could end up sharing it for a while."

Ganon's eyes widened, just a bit. This was even better than what he had dared hope for.

"You are offering to let me place my spirit inside your body," he said, his tone carefully controlled to hide any excitement and to instead sound nearly bored.

"I'm offering a partnership," Lakey answered. "I will share my body in exchange for your sharing your power. I will allow you to leave this Tower and to claim Hyrule again, but 'you' will really be 'us': two minds united into one great entity!"

Ganon's eyes narrowed briefly as he considered any potential trap in the offer.

"And how do you propose we do that?" he asked.

"I have a spell that will bind your spirit to mine, if you let it. Don't worry, I can…"

"I think not."

Ganon disappeared, just to make the point clearer: he was not going to submit to this man's spell and risk becoming his slave.

Lakey's eyes widened and when he spoke, panic was evident in his voice. "Wait! Don't give up negotiations so easily! All right… you're not comfortable with my casting a spell? I'm open to suggestions."

Ganon remained invisible. "It would be necessary to cast a spell in order to allow my spirit into your body, and I am in no condition to do it myself," he said, "but unless you are willing to cast a spell as I dictate it to you, I am not interested."

Lakey was quiet for a minute, considering. In retrospect, he should have expected Ganon's concerns, and they were certainly understandable. In fact, he had the very same reservations about casting a spell Ganon would give him. On the other hand, Lakey prided himself in being the best spell-weaver alive, and was confident he could detect any foul play in the spell Ganon gave him and either stop casting it or modify it at the last minute.

"Agreed," he said.

Ganon reappeared, smiling in a rather terrifying manner. Lakey smiled right back, refusing to show any fear towards the monster he was allying himself with, quite convinced he had nothing to fear from the simple, reportedly mad ghostly brute.

"Well then," Ganon said, "let's start, shall we?"

He started dictating in Ancient Hylian. The spell was not one that needed perfect pronunciation, as he had developed it to escape bodies that were no longer usable and often were not quite in talking order anymore. All that was needed for this spell was to try and speak it – anybody could do it, as long as they had a voice to try and speak it with.

Lakey frowned, but he thankfully did understand a good bit of Ancient Hylian. He mentally translated what Ganon had just said as a magical agreement to proceed - basically a magical contract - and repeated it.

Ganon smiled, satisfied, and carried on to the second part of the spell. Lakey once more translated in his head, found it to be the expected linking of spirits, and repeated.

Ganon's smile turned to a grin as he dictated the third part. Lakey translated and smiled too – as expected, Ganon was attempting to make his spirit dominate and take full control. He opened his mouth to finish the spell with the necessary modifications to revert roles.

What came out was a scream as pain suddenly flared in his body, taking over all his senses and obliterating everything else from his mind. He lost track of time while the pain raked through him and when it finally stopped, he collapsed, breathless.

He heard Ganon chuckled and looked up, panting.

"I suggest you start casting the spell as I dictated it, and quickly. The first part you cast bound you to do the spell I dictated, and you will be punished for any attempt at modification and for any undue delay."

Lakey's eyes widened in horror. This couldn't be happening; he couldn't have been had so easily. Ganon was supposed to be mad, he couldn't have outwitted him!

"I WAS mad," Ganon answered, "but dying did my sanity a world of good."

He burst out laughing at that and Lakey whimpered. Their spirits were already linked, so of course Ganon could already hear his thoughts, although the demon was somehow keeping his private.

"Practice," Ganon said. "I've spent a lot of time around people who enjoyed invading other people's thoughts. Such gifted people make for very useful allies, but one does want to protect one's privacy."

Lakey did not get a chance to answer, in thoughts or otherwise, as the spell he had cast himself kicked in again, once more inflicting more pain on him than he had ever thought possible – it felt as though his whole body was on fire, and it just kept getting worse. He was huddled in a whimpering ball by the time it finally stopped again.

"The spell will not give up," Ganon warned in a disinterested tone. "You can continue to resist as long as you want, it will make no difference in the end. Trying to kill yourself will not help either, by the way; the spell will react to that, too."

Lakey whimpered again. He'd just have to find a way to defeat Ganon once the monster was controlling his body; there was nothing he could do to prevent it now. He concentrated on the happy thought of eventually making Ganon pay for tricking him and quickly recited the last part of the spell.

When Ganon laughed, it was with the mouth that had formerly belonged to Lakey.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

I think Lakey!Ganon will settle on Lake Hylia and become a fisherman. Do you? No?

Oh, all right, I AM kidding. I'm happy to say he's indeed going to be a very bad person/demon.

Thanks for reading! Reviews are, as always, insanely appreciated. I have some one-shots in mind, character studies of a few different incarnations of Link as I see them. What do you think? Been done three thousand times? Or are fresh perspectives still interesting?


	5. Chapter 5: Safety Measures

**Chapter 5: Safety Measures**

Once Ganon took over, Lakey found himself having trouble thinking of anything, much less figuring out a way to bring the Demon under his control. Either because he could not or because he didn't care to, Ganon was no longer hiding his thoughts from him, and Lakey was overwhelmed by centuries worth of memories, the monster's current thoughts - which centered around finding Zelda, whom the monster only thought of as the Princess or the girl, and getting some information from her - and daydream-like visions of killing the Hero, the Princess and people in general.

The first solid thought he managed to think was that it was just too much, which led him to wishing for a way to control what he experienced of Ganon's mind. Unable to concentrate on that for long, he found himself wondering why Ganon didn't seem to have any memories of his childhood, and then marvelling at how close he'd been from defeating the Hero in many of the memories, and then wanting to know what the Demon wanted to learn from Zelda.

He latched on to that curiosity in an attempt to concentrate on just one part of Ganon's thoughts, and for a few seconds, it worked: he saw a bit deeper into the intent and found out Ganon believed the girl had found and hid the Triforce, and that he wanted to get the location out of her. He then sunk into wishing Ganon would find the magical artefact and use it to re-create his own body and therefore leave this one, and after a few minutes, noticed that the daydreaming was allowing him to keep Ganon's thoughts at bay.

In spirit, he smiled. He could think his own thoughts after all; all he had to do was concentrate on his own desires to be able to ignore the onslaught of words, images and sensations coming from the monster's mind. He indulged in more wishful thinking, letting himself fantasize about finding a way to be useful to Ganon and forcing the alliance he had been seeking in the first place.

He was jarred back to the here and now by a strong feeling of displacement and suddenly, the sensory inputs he was still getting from his body changed completely from the dark, musty Tower to a rooftop lit by a near full moon and countless stars. At the same time, he suddenly felt exhausted. His body staggered and Ganon cursed under his breath at his weakness.

* * *

Zelda glanced at her candle and sighed: it was almost burnt down to nothing, which meant that by her own resolution, she would soon have to give up for the night and go to sleep. She stretched in her chair and let her eyes wander around the spacious and currently deserted main reading room of the Palace's Library.

Rows upon rows of books and scrolls met her glance; the sum total of all Hyrulian knowledge, or more precisely, the sum total of all remaining Hyrulian knowledge – whatever Ganon had not destroyed.

Mostly, that was history books; Ganon apparently believed in keeping a written backup of his and his land's past. On the other hand, science books, technical manuals and fictional works had been methodically destroyed and Zelda would not have known there had ever been any if not for their being mentioned in some of the history books. Magic books, for their part, had been painstakingly individually sealed – Zelda could guess that Ganon had felt the need to keep them but had not wanted to take the risk of anyone else reading them.

Link often joked that she must have read everything in the Library by now, but sadly, that was far from the truth: she had only managed to unseal four of the magic books to date, and although they had taught her a few spells, she was a very far cry from having enough mastery of magic to do any good in a battle against Ganon. She was making good progress on learning to create Lost Doors – or at least she thought she was, it was impossible to be sure with magic. She had also found a spell that would prevent Ganon from ever making her give him the information he needed again, although she feared the spell nearly as much as what it was meant to prevent, but she had learned little else of practical value unless you deemed things like the ability to change the colour of her clothes practical.

As for the history books, Zelda estimated she had read maybe 20% of the Library's collection in the past three years, and if the information she needed now was anywhere, it was somewhere in the remaining 80%; thus her late night reading habit.

She gave herself a few slaps to bring her mind back on focus and resumed reading the architectural history of Hyrule Castle, looking for mention of special paving stones and what may have become of them whenever the Palace was renovated or even moved. She had time to skim through a few pages dedicated to windows before her candle went out. She resignedly marked her page and got up, the moonlight guiding her around the tables, chairs and bookcases.

Like most every night, she was sorely tempted to just keep going, to forgo sleep altogether. The fact she knew lack of sleep would ultimately do more harm than good was the only reason she kept herself limited to one candle-worth of reading time past curfew. The fact that she knew stopping was necessary, however, did not make it any less frustrating. There was just too much she needed to know, and each time she stopped searching for the answers, she worried about Ganon reappearing before she found those answers; imagined the monster taking over while she watched helplessly, lacking the knowledge she needed to help stop him.

Link regularly called her a worry-wart for it, arguing that they had defeated Ganon before with what they already knew or, alternatively, that there was no reason to think the Demon would find the Triforce. Zelda disagreed with both points: they had only defeated Ganon before because their foe had made mistakes that he was not likely to repeat again, and they had no reason to think that a newly determined Ganon – thanks to her foolishly putting the idea in his head - wouldn't find the Triforce.

She was walking across the courtyard towards her room when someone spoke her name from right behind her. She yelped, badly startled, and jumped forward while twisting herself around to face whoever it was and give them a good lecture. At this time of the night, only guards would be out and about, and this one had probably figured giving her a heart attack would be a laugh. She had half a mind to 'accidentally' hex him and see if he thought THAT was funny. Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw it hadn't been a guard at all.

"Lakey?" she asked, forgetting, in her shock, to call him 'Mister'. "What…" she gave her head a little shake to put her thoughts back in place and frowned at the tourist. "What are you doing here? You're not allowed inside the Palace at night! How did you even get in?"

"I teleported on the roof."

"You can teleport?" She sighed; there was just no end to the stuff tourists could do with their various devices. And why was her hair standing on end? "Then teleport out of here, will you? You're lucky I know you, a guard would have probably assumed that you were dangerous."

"They would be right, Princess," he chuckled.

Zelda took a step back and simultaneously cast an imprisoning spell on the tourist. She had decided that she'd rather look silly if it turned out the man was fooling around than take any chance.

"This isn't a joke," she admonished. "I've just immobilized you, and now I'm going to call the guards, who will put you in a cell before I release you. You want to start being serious, Mr Lakey, we have too much history to…"

She gasped as the blue shimmer of her spell vanished, following Lakey waving a hand. Lakey grinned, and several things clicked into place for Zelda:

If tourists could teleport, she would have known before now.

He had called her Princess.

His magic completely overpowered hers.

He had come straight for her.

Most important of all, she knew that grin. The face, mouth and teeth were different – human - but it didn't matter; she'd know that malevolent smile anywhere: Ganon's.

* * *

The Princess was unable to hide her fear when she finally realized who he was, and indeed did not try very hard. Instead, she started casting an encasing spell.

Ganon had to admire the strategy – the spell would seal her away and allow no harm to come to her, so it would protect her from any torture, physical or magical. Better yet, there was no counter spell that he could cast to prevent her from protecting herself and thus her secrets in this way.

Sadly for her, the spell took almost three full seconds to cast; more than enough time for him to make a move. He reached out for her mind with his own and homed in on the information he was looking for: the location of the Triforce.

The limited time he had only allowed him a glimpse of the images the Princess associated with the Triforce, but it was enough: a tile in the old Castle's courtyard, a jewel in the Twilight and a piece enchanted to convince people it was a mere replica of itself in Termina.

He barked a laugh of triumph just as the spell completed, the protective crystal melting onto the Princess's body. Her expression of terror at his laugh froze like the rest of her in a very satisfying fashion.

"You know, Princess," Ganon said in a thoughtful voice belied by his grin, "it seems a shame that you will be able to undo this spell as soon as I'm gone. I rather like you like this. Interesting tidbit about this particular spell: did you know it has two big flaws? The first is that although the caster cannot be harmed, he or she can be moved, such as say, to the bottom of Lake Hylia or inside the crater in Death Mountain. You can guess that if I were to do that, you would not be able to break the spell until someone found you and managed to get you back to safety, because you would either drown or burn if you did."

"The second flaw is, in my opinion, even more interesting:" he continued, "the shield you have created can be modified by an outside spellcaster, such as, say, myself. It can't be weakened or destroyed, but it can be reinforced, even so well as to make it nearly impossible for you to dissolve it. I must be honest here, if I were to do this, you would still be able to break free after a few days of complete concentration. I'm very curious as to whether or not you will succeed… I'm guessing no. The boy is claustrophobic because he spent centuries in a bottle, and you did as well, so I'm thinking you're likely to be claustrophobic too. I'm thinking you will soon be in too much of a panic from being trapped in a cell literally no bigger than your body to concentrate for more than a few seconds at a time. I could be wrong… what do you think? Let's find out, shall we?"

Ganon placed his palm on the crystalline statue, resting it on the top of Zelda's head. Still grinning, he narrowed his eyes in concentration until his hand glowed a bright silver, silver which spread on the crystalline substance covering Zelda until the young woman was coated in silver rather than crystal.

Ganon poked the statue-like form and let it fall at his feet, grinning. It hit the ground with a loud clang and Ganon teleported back to the roof, watching as guards rushed out upon having heard the noise.

* * *

Link felt like he'd just barely fallen asleep when loud knocks at his door woke him up. He groaned and buried his head under his pillow, instinctively trying to block out the noise.

The knocks quickly redoubled in strength and whoever it was started screaming his name. Link groaned again and got up to open the door. He already had his mouth opened, ready to tell off whoever it was, but the guard's expression of sheer horror stopped him.

"Link," the guard said urgently. "The President said to get you. It's Zelda, she's…"

Link's heart skipped a beat and his mind snapped awake. "What's wrong with her?" he asked in a shaky voice. "What happened?"

"We don't know," the guard answered, shaking his head dejectedly. "She… she seems to have turned into a statue."

Link's eyes widened and his mind went blank from the shock. A statue… Zelda was just as afraid of closed places as he was, and now she was enclosed in her own body? It didn't get any tighter than that, she'd go crazy like that! And… a statue? Statues didn't talk, they didn't get angry, they didn't look at him, they didn't order him around and they didn't help him try and prepare for the next time Ganon came back. Statues didn't have soft hair, their eyes didn't narrow when they were angry or annoyed, they didn't get so absorbed in books that they didn't hear him coming… the thought of Zelda as a statue was intolerable.

He opened his mouth, closed it again, swallowed and grabbed the guards' shoulders with trembling hands.

"Where?" he croaked.

"We've transported her to her room," the guard replied. Link zoomed right past him.

He ran straight to Zelda's room and burst in, heedless of the guard at the door. He saw her right away, on her bed, a horrified expression fixed on her face. The President was pacing next to the bed, wriggling his hands. Link was not quite aware of moving towards it, but found himself kneeling next to the bed, his hands around Zelda's cold, silver-covered own.

"You don't know who did this?" Link asked.

"No," the President answered, his tone all business,"but she looks terrified. I'm afraid we need to assume the worst. You should go get the Master Sword back."

Link's eyes widened.

"But if Ganon was back, she would have…" he trailed off and groaned. If Ganon was back, Zelda would have used that security measure of hers, the one he'd been so worried might involve her committing suicide rather than give Ganon the information he wanted. And, he guessed, she had indeed used it. It didn't involve her dying after all, but this was arguably just as bad: Zelda had locked herself away, turned herself into a statue to prevent Ganon from torturing her.

It didn't make sense, though. She would have known better than to leave him to face Ganon alone, so she would have made sure she could come back to normal once the Demon was no longer in the vicinity. And her expression… it wasn't apprehension, it was shock and horror, like she'd just seen or found out about something terrifying.

A violent shudder ran through him as his brains caught up with themselves and the full force of what HE'd just found out managed to hammer through the fact Zelda was trapped inside her own body turned statue: Ganon was back. He instinctively squeezed the metallic hand.

"Ganon…" he whimpered. "I can't do this. I can't, I… what if he… oh, no. Goddesses…"

The President felt the blood drain from his face just hearing Link's voice. He grabbed the boy by his shoulders.

"What? What if what?"

"Today," Link breathed. "We found out today. TODAY!"

The President's eyes widened and he looked at Zelda again. He knew she had some kind of plan to prevent Ganon from getting any information from her, and he knew she refused to discuss the nature of that plan with anyone. Like Link, he had guessed that she was sparing them, and looking at the metallic form on the bed, he reached the same conclusion as the Hero: statues cannot be tortured and cannot talk. His eyes reluctantly trailed to the young woman's face, which was showing a fear much more intense than it should have if she'd been mentally ready to do this to herself for months.

"He got it out of her before that spell took full effect," he guessed, swallowing. "Link, you need to hurry. You also know what she knew, right?"

Link gulped and nodded. "But it's not much," he said, his voice higher pitched than normal. "I mean… I have no idea how to…"

The President inhaled deeply. Panic was not going to help, he needed to project calm and hopefully, some of it would seep into Link; enough for the Hero to do his job.

"Then you need to find out. Ask your past selves. And in the meantime, go get that sword right away. I'll look after her and we'll try to free her, don't worry. Now go, you know Ganon won't waste any time."

Link got up, but his eyes stayed on Zelda. "Why is she still like that?" he asked. "She wouldn't just leave me to do this alone, she doesn't trust me that much."

The President held back an exasperated sigh. "I think she trusts you more than you realize, but I'm guessing she meant for the spell to wear off once she was safe. Either she messed it up, or this is actually Ganon's doing. It doesn't matter right now, you need to get going. Every minute counts, Link."

Link seemed paralyzed and for a few seconds, the President feared the Hero would be in shock for hours or days. But the young man finally got up and with obvious reluctance, let go of Zelda's hand.

"Right," he said shakily. "I… yes. I need the Master Sword. I better… go. Now."

It felt to Link as though it were someone else talking. His mind was spinning; he couldn't do this, he couldn't counter Ganon by himself, he couldn't find the Triforce before the Demon did. And yet, what else could he do but try? If he couldn't defeat Ganon, no one else could.

It was the same thing as last time all over again… he had to stop Ganon because he was the only one who possibly could. The fact that he didn't think he stood a chance didn't matter; the fact he had only managed last time because he'd had Zelda to push him along and guide him didn't matter. He still had to try, and for everyone's sake, he needed to find a way to succeed.

He tore his eyes away from Zelda and walked out of the room. He started jogging once he was in the hallway and he was running at full speed within a few steps.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

Thank you for reading, please review and let me know what you think! I live on feedback.


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